The top line of the messes radiating from Minneapolis is that another bystander, a citizen, is dead at the hands of federal agents being given virtual immunity from responsibility for increasingly random and brutal tactics.
The chaos of a seemingly uncontrolled deportation campaign being waged from the White House already is seriously affecting migrant families, cities and states, the expectations of policing and protest and the very credibility of the government, whose accounts do not stand up to any level of scrutiny of bystander videos.
We're only beginning to see the ripples reach questions of fairness of law and the disappearance of due process, the need for basic rules of engagement in urban areas, policies about guns and free assembly – basic building blocks of expectations for living in an American democracy. We're now looking at a certain political cliff for shutdown of the government over tactics of ICE and border control enforcers seemingly under-trained for urban deployment.
Apart from all else, we cannot even see federal officials focused on the same questions that the rest of us have. Homeland Security sees only disruption of its undisciplined grabbing of random people, not their tactics that have resulted in three shootings in a month, including two fatal shootings of U.S. citizens.
Violating Policing Standards
By all accounts except those from Homeland Security, these federal agents are routinely violating accepted policing procedures over weapons, raids, crowd control and use of chemical irritants – all with the active encouragement, incentive and demand of Republican leadership in Washington.
We're seeing Minnesota calling out the same National Guard to protect against masked Homeland Security agents while we see efforts by Donald Trump to nationalize National Guard troops – and perhaps armed active military troops – to protect federal agents against protests by U.S. citizens.
The weekend's shooting of Alex Pretti, 37, a nurse who tried to help a pepper-sprayed protestor is brushed aside as the work of a handgun-toting "domestic terrorist" without even a nod to the political insistence over decades by the very advocates of this deportation campaign for the right to carry guns openly on city streets. Is this not a time to acknowledge that having civilians openly carry guns while masked federal agents in camo or not are brandishing tear gas guns and live-fire rifles just might result in violence?
We know for certain that it will happen again.
There is little official acknowledgement of what we see now in slowed-down videos – that the holstered, legal 9 mm gun Pretti carried had been removed before at least one or more of the half dozen agents shot the prostrate, restrained Pretti, emptying 10 bullets point blank into him when he clearly was no threat to them. Indeed, even the assertion that Pretti had approached them in a threatening manner was contradicted.
Under questioning, ICE operations chief Greg Bovino could only evade explanation of the details to insist that his agents felt under threat.
No Effective Accountability
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is so focused on carrying out White House-set quotas for speeded migrant arrests that she is quick and sure not only about defending her army against all criticism, but to resist investigation by anyone not part of her controlled groups. Have we forgotten that when local police in Tennessee or Georgia or even Minneapolis were involved in questionable citizen deaths, we turned immediately for investigation by a more independent agency – like the FBI. Now the FBI is part of closing down questions about ballistics and witness testimony.
Trump only seems to weigh in to throw his considerable weight against state and local officials who do not agree with him, whether on ICE tactics, immigration policies, the goals of "sanctuary" cities. Trump even insists on linking his perception that social service fund frauds among 89 Minnesotans who include Somali Americans should be grounds for deporting all Somalis, migrant, asylum applicant or naturalized citizen. Noem demanded that Minnesota turn over voter records, as if that has anything to do with excessively brutal policing tactics.
Trump sees Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz of "inciting" protester mobs – something he could not see himself for doing at the January 6, 2021 Capitol riots of Trump mobs.
Trump has ordered ICE to Maine next, and the same lines of conflict already are reported forming in Portland and Lewiston. Polling is showing significant unhappiness with the tactical choices by ICE even among those who identify as Republican or who say they align with the larger goals of the deportation campaign.
We have forgotten our values as Americans. Our government has blinded itself to economic, historic or even moral principles about immigration. There is only one hammer to use against this nail, and it is force, whether against migrant families, children coming home from day care and school, or against U.S. citizens willing to stand for hours in sub-zero weather to tell ICE to knock it off.
We are long past ICE targeting of serious criminals among migrants. We are turning democracy on its head in pursuit of a racialized, politicized goal that will serve not serve positive results for law and order, crime, immigration, law, or even the political success of Republicans. It comes in a month in which Trump has squandered international trust among its allies, in which threats of trade wars and prosecutions are thrown around as so many arbitrary weapons based on Trump's whim, in which the law itself has been made optional.
What are they possibly thinking happens when the U.S. government loses all credibility?